


Just This Once, Rose

by SallyExactly



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Flashbacks, Gen, Hugs all around, Not Finale Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 22:40:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17734001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SallyExactly/pseuds/SallyExactly
Summary: To hell with fridging.





	Just This Once, Rose

**Author's Note:**

> CN: references to dismemberment and homophobia

Growing up, Mom had hammered into their heads the importance of paying it forward. “Sometimes people will do nice things for you, Rufus. Sometimes because they like you, sometimes because they want to look good, sometimes because they like the idea of helping someone,” she would say, with the clear-sightedness she’d learned during a hard life that had made her deeply pragmatic, but somehow, not bitter. “And you may not be able to pay them back. But in the future, you can help someone else out.”

He’d once make the mistake of muttering, “Why do I have to do something else when I’m grown up just because someone wants to treat me like a charity case?”

Her expression had hardened. “One, young man, I didn’t say _grown up_. Two, are people like that the standard you really want to hold yourself to?”

“No, Mom,” he’d sighed.

She’d kissed his head. “Good. Now go set the table.”

He tried, as he got older. Helped a kid out struggling in one of his classes here, kept an eye on a new, kind of isolated coworker there. Volunteered on the weekends, when he wasn’t working, teaching kids in Oakland to code, which he liked a lot. Judged science fairs at the local schools, and took even the most totally unworkable projects seriously.

Then, fast forward a few years, and he ended up piloting a time machine, moving into a series of secret bunkers, and coming back one day to find that in an alternate reality he’d bled to death on a dirty porch in 1888 and his whole team had busted their asses to fix that.

So maybe this wasn’t so much paying forward as paying back. Whatever. Mom had raised him right.

The door closed. Jiya came over and looked down at what he was working on. “A Homeland Security file on the deaths of Iris and Lorena Flynn,” she observed. “‘Mile marker 47, Portero Road’ on a piece of notebook paper. And a Google search on Henry Wallace.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“What are you up to?”

So he told her.

Her eyebrows went up. Then she turned away. “You’re a good person, Rufus,” she said quietly, after a minute. She cleared her throat, and started folding some clothes she’d left on the bed. “It’s gonna get you killed some day. Oh, wait,  _that happened_ .”

Right now she alternated between being furious with him and refusing to let him out of her sight. Well,  _alternated_ implied that she was never both at the same time, which definitely wasn’t true. But… the anger and the paranoia both showed so clearly the shape of the grief she’d been living with.

He got up and went over to her. He turned her around so he could kiss her, gently, at length, so she could wrap her arms around his neck and hang on to him like she was drowning and he was air. He slid his fingers through her newly-short hair— new to him, anyway— and kissed her again, until he stopped tasting salt, until she stopped shuddering.

She pulled away, and wiped her eyes. “Should we, you know, check with them first?”

He smiled at her pronoun.

“Hey, Wyatt?” he asked, a few hours later, as Wyatt was finishing up a workout, wiping the sweat from his face.

Wyatt looked up and smiled. “Hey, Rufus, what’s up.” He was clearly pleased to see Rufus, which, a guy could get used to that, you know? But equally clearly he had circles under his eyes deep and dark enough to hide the  _Millennium Falcon_ from the entire Imperial fleet.

Wait, would that make those weird eyelash mite thingies the space slug in this analogy?

Rufus made himself focus. “Uh, quick hypothetical question for you.” He scratched the back of his head. “So, if we could, uh, bring back your original Jessica, would you, uh, want us to? Considering she’d kind of wipe this other Jessica and your unborn kid out of existence.”

Wyatt’s smile vanished. “There is no kid, Rufus.” He racked the weights like they weighed nothing, which, yeah, not intimidating at all. “That’s just another thing she lied about.” He looked up, clapped Rufus on the shoulder, said, “Good to have you back, buddy,” with a look on his face more suited to a hanging, and went off to, like, brood in the Batcave or whatever.

Okay then.

He had one other person he needed to talk to, and it took him a while to talk her into it, several long conversations, in fact. But he wasn’t above trading on that whole “hey, remember how I was just dead?” thing. So. He made his plans, and then there was nothing to do but wait for the right chance.

#

“Uh, guys, I’m gonna stay behind and… guard the Lifeboat,” Jiya said, as they scrambled out into the muggy air of June 1969, Ohio.

He and she exchanged looks. It had to be her, and it had to be now. This might be the only time they jumped in the 20 th century for a while. Go much farther back, and they wouldn’t have the juice for a second pair of jumps  _and_ still get back home.

The others exchanged looks, too. “Are you feeling okay?” Lucy asked.

“Yeah, I just, you know… I mean, we know Emma’s in charge now, and sooner or later she’s going to try to lure us into a trap just like Flynn did.”

Flynn looked unrepentant.

“And now that the Lifeboat can carry all five of us, we can still pair off like we used to and someone can be the rear guard,” Jiya added.

“You sure this isn’t just an excuse to go joyriding?” Wyatt asked, smirking lopsidedly.

“Yeah, Wyatt, you caught me,” Jiya said. “I haven’t spent enough time time traveling, so I was totally gonna, you know, drop in on Rufus as a boy, stuff like that.”

Wyatt snorted. “We probably should leave a rear guard.”

Honestly, what they  _should_ do was  _not send both pilots on one trip_ . But Jiya had informed them that the chances of her letting Rufus go without her any time soon were basically zero, so.

Which made it even more remarkable she was willing to go along with this.

Wyatt and Lucy seemed to get that this was A Moment, too. “Okay,” Wyatt said.

“Be safe,” Lucy said.

Flynn pulled a gun from somewhere and offered it to Jiya, butt first.

She looked at him.

“What, you’d rather be totally defenseless?” he asked.

“Thanks for that vote of confidence,” she muttered. But she took it anyway. “Doesn’t that leave _you_ without a gun?”

Flynn gave her an  _oh-please_ look which could’ve meant  _don’t be ridiculous, I have twenty-seven weapons on my person right now_ , which Rufus really didn’t wanna think about, thanks very much, or,  _don’t be ridiculous, it’ll take me 0.00001 seconds to get another weapon_ .

Which just made it super fantastic when Wyatt decided to go with Lucy, leaving Rufus to go with Flynn. Thanks for that, Wyatt. Sure, Flynn  _probably_ wasn’t gonna kill him. But traveling with two pilots meant that Flynn wouldn’t be stuck in 1969 if he did.

“What,” Rufus said after a few minutes, “not gonna promise not to kill me this trip?”

Flynn grunted. “If I even  _thought_ about joking about killing you, Jiya would not only spontaneously appear, she’d find a way to kick my ass.”

She would, wouldn’t she? Aw, that gave Rufus such a nice warm feeling.

“Wait. You were joking?”

Flynn looked at him like he was an idiot. “Of course I was joking, you think I  _want_ to be stuck in 1692?”

“Oh, so that’s your objection. Great.”

“I’m sorry about Chicago,” Flynn snapped. “I didn’t want to, I had to. I thought your team was gonna hand the world to Rittenhouse if I didn’t stop you, and you were _remarkably_ hard to stop.”

“Yeah, you know,” Rufus said after a minute, “I still got to pilot the Lifeboat back while trying not to bleed out, and then undergo emergency surgery without anesthetic in an Oakland warehouse, so…”

Flynn made a wordless noise that might’ve been a growl.

They kept going.

“You’ve almost died, right?” Rufus said after a while.

“Uh, yep.”

“What’s it like?”

“Which time?”

… that wasn’t awful or anything.

“I mean, people who have near-death experiences always say that it, like, changed them. Made them better people or whatever. And I _was_ dead, but I don’t remember it.”

“I doubt it’s gonna make you a better person. You’re already nauseatingly good to begin with.”

Rufus couldn’t figure out whether to be insulted, or complimented, coming from Flynn.

“The first time all I had time to think was, my mom doesn’t deserve to lose another kid,” Flynn said after a few minutes.

“How _old_ were you?”

“Sixteen. I’d just stumbled onto a minefield in Croatia. My friend had just been blown up, and I knew I was gonna die, too.”

“… so then what happened?” Rufus was curious despite himself.

“I stopped,” Flynn said, after a pause. “Turned, shot back. Somehow I killed all my pursuers before they could kill me. Went back the way I’d come.” Silence. “My friend’s hand had been blown to safety. I brought that back. Thought it might help his family.”

That— what the—  _oh my_ God—

He didn’t even know where to  _start_ with that.

If Flynn had been trying to provoke him, it would’ve been just  _garden-variety_ horrifying, but this— he was just making  _conversation_ . 

… well then.

Rufus decided he wasn’t going to ask any more. They kept going.

So. They succeeded in keeping Rittenhouse from laying a foundation to make the entire country horrifyingly dependent on private water suppliers and therefore subject to coercion. But leaving Wyatt behind in 1969 definitely wasn’t part of the plan. Their plan,  _or_ his plan. To be fair, his plan didn’t have anything to do with Wyatt deciding to stay to help make things right with a family Emma’s antics had just terrorized, or with him sending Lucy back because Emma had the whole town looking for her.

“Okay, take me and Jiya back in the Lifeboat, and you and Flynn come right back for Wyatt.”

“Yeah, so, about that,” Rufus said, powering everything up, “we’ll have to swap out the battery first.”

It still took four hours to recharge the battery, so they’d compensated by making the battery easily accessible and building some spares. Well, “easily.” The damn thing weighed about seventy-five pounds. But there was always one fully charged back in the bunker.

“What? Why?”

“… ‘cause Jiya really did go joyriding in the Lifeboat.”

“ _What?_ ”

Flynn echoed her shock. “What, you haven’t had enough chances to get typhoid already?”

“I didn’t go anywhere with typhoid,” Jiya said. “I just went to 1990 Chicago.”

“ _Why?_ ” Lucy demanded. “I don’t understand, why would you do that and, and risk the Lifeboat? And why are _you_ so calm about this?” she added, probably directed to the back of Rufus’s head.

“Look, Agent Christopher cleared it,” Rufus said.

“She did _what?_ ”

Then the roughness of the jump shut Lucy and Flynn up, which was kind of a relief.

#

His stomach and head were spinning. Partly that was from this damned trip; ever since upgrading the Lifeboat to carry more people and safely cross its own timeline, so they could go after Rufus, the ride had been even bumpier than usual. Partly it was from listening to Lucy, Rufus and Jiya argue over leaving Wyatt behind.

Rufus and Jiya were up to something, that was clear, but right now, Garcia was too nauseated to give a damn. Maybe they were doing… couples multi-century geocaching. Hell if he knew.

As soon as they stopped, he fumbled with his seat belt, determined to get fresh air. He bolted for the hatch, waited impatiently for it to open, started through—

He froze.

Distantly, he noticed Lucy running into his back and bouncing off.

The voices behind him were equally distant: “Hey, what’s the hold up?” Jiya. And: “Flynn? … Flynn.” Lucy.

The voice in front of him was not: “Daddy?”

He’d snapped. This was what a break with reality felt like.

He managed to step forward to the top of the stairs.

“I see them too, Flynn,” came Lucy’s quiet voice behind him. His mind had decided to incorporate her into the hallucination.

Because—

Because that wasn’t Iris, in the blue sweatshirt, the ends of her hair dyed purple. That wasn’t his little girl— not so little any more— looking up at him, her happy expression slowly fading to concern.

He staggered down the stairs, distantly aware of Lucy’s steadying hand on his shoulder.

The girl who looked like Iris looked behind her. “Is he okay?”

And behind her, that wasn’t— dear God— that wasn’t _Lorena_ watching him. That wasn’t his wife, the woman with whose heart his own had beat in sync. Couldn’t be. This was a painful dream.

She— the girl who— she came forward. This was a painful dream. But, oh, to touch them again, to hold them again, even just in a dream, would be  _worth_ the agony of waking to reality.

He couldn’t stand. He couldn’t breathe.

One of those was optional. He fell to his knees at the bottom of the stairs.

“Dad?” the ghost in front of him asked. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

He raised his shaking hand. He reached for her hair. Then he flinched back, afraid to— afraid—

He reached again.

Her hair was soft and dry under his palm. Her head was warm. Trembling, he smoothed her messy hair back from her face.

“ _Iris?_ ” he breathed.

“Uh, _yeah_ , who else would I be?”

The woman who looked like Lorena slowly came forward. She look less bewildered and more disturbed than— than Iris. And she stopped several feet away, watching them.

Wrenching his hand off of Iris’s hair was the hardest thing he’d ever done, harder even than leaving their bodies— in the blood— He swallowed, and looked at Agent Christopher. “ _How?_ ”

She looked bewildered. “How  _what,_ Flynn?”

“They could be _Rittenhouse_.” The name was foul in his mouth. His longing and his horror threatened to split him bodily.

“Flynn, they’re _definitely_ not Rittenhouse. Your own wife and child?”

Iris looked completely confused. Lorena—

Lorena looked solemn.

“They could be like Jessica,” Flynn growled.

“Jessica _Logan?_ ” Agent Christopher glanced at someone behind him. “The letter said something about that. I’ve known her since she was little, she’s not Rittenhouse either.”

“What,” Lucy said behind him, “did you _do?_ ”

“Ah, heh…” Rufus said.

He just— this was— how could—

He grabbed Iris and crushed her against him in his arms, burying his face in her hair. He breathed in the smell of her, felt her little arms go around him, too. He couldn’t stop shaking. He was crying into her hair. He couldn’t— this was—

She was  _here_ .

Oh, God, Iris, who he’d last seen dead on her bedroom floor, staring—

No.

“Daddy,” Iris said, her voice muffled against his chest, “you’re being _super_ weird right now.”

He snorted, and swallowed a sob. He rocked her back and forth. “Iris,” he whispered. “Iris,  _Iris_ .” Each syllable was precious and sweet on his tongue. He didn’t know how this had happened, but he would enjoy the dream as long as it lasted.

When she squirmed impatiently, he loosened his grip. He put his hands on her shoulders and stared at her. Taller, skinnier, more grown up, her hair grown curly like Lorena’s, her face no longer the size of his hand. But still the same big dark eyes, still the same barely-there smudge of a nose.

He reached out and touched it with one finger.

“Daddy, what _is_ it?”

Lorena slowly came forward. Garcia let his hands drop from Iris’s shoulders.

Like Iris, she was a little older, now, than in his dreams. Her hair was longer, tamed into a braid. Her beautiful laugh lines— they looked a little unused, these days, and his heart ached for that even as he knew he couldn’t be the one to fix it.

Iris looked over her shoulder and moved out of the way so Lorena could stand directly in front of him. He stayed where he was, and stared up at her.

Her face, her beautiful, mobile face, with its panoply of vivid expressions, was somber, now. He knew every inch of her— that little hollow between her wrist bones, that smattering of freckles on the right side of her neck, the way she turned her right foot out a little farther than her left one, the result of a college car accident. She was real.

Very dimly, he was aware of the Lifeboat departing again, a wave of air ruffling the curls that had inevitably escaped Lorena’s braid. She held out her hands to him, but he didn’t dare touch her, not after all he’d done— he didn’t know how he’d dare to touch Iris—

He lurched to his feet, not taking his eyes off her. He gasped when she reached out and took his hands in hers. The shock of her fingers, the warmth—

She closed the distance between them. “Garcia?”

He nearly sobbed at the sound of her voice. He tightened his fingers around hers. She deserved better than he, and in just a moment he would let her go, but he needed— looking at her, her hands on his, was like— water on parched earth—

“Did I hear the Lifeboat—”

Garcia looked up, shoved Lorena behind him, drew his gun, and leveled it at Jessica Logan.

“Flynn!” Agent Christopher snapped, drawing her own gun. She kept it pointed down, maybe because— oh, God, no— his girls were right behind him—

“Put the gun down,” she ordered.

Flynn ignored that. Jessica had frozen, hands in plain sight, away from her body. “What is she doing here?”

“Wyatt’s _wife?_ She _lives_ here.”

“In our timeline,” Lucy said, “the timeline we just left— Rittenhouse went back and indoctrinated Jessica as a child, and she ended up stealing the Lifeboat and Jiya—”

It was possible this timeline was different. But there was an easy way to find out. “Is your brother alive?”

“Kevin? Yeah, of course he’s alive.” She looked from him to Agent Christopher. “What the hell is going _on_ here?”

“The _gun_ , Flynn,” Agent Christopher snapped.

Except if she shot him, even just to wound, she’d be shorting their own manpower. She wouldn’t do that unless he left her no choice.

“This isn’t the same Jessica, Flynn,” Lucy said quietly. “We don’t know if she’s Rittenhouse.” She appeared in his peripheral vision— and then crossed directly into his line of sight.

He lowered the gun as she backed towards Jessica. “ _Damn_ it, Lucy—” She had her unprotected  _back_ to Jessica, who was lowering her hands— if she pulled a gun—

“Would someone please explain what the hell is going on?” Agent Christopher demanded.

Lorena was no longer behind him. He risked one quick glance around, and found them both on the other side of the couch, Iris looking at him like—

He swallowed, and turned away. Well, he’d ripped the bandage off now, and at least— at least they knew—

“Rufus?” Lucy asked. “Want to explain?”

#

She did up the locks and slumped against the door, grateful for a chance to catch her breath. Her studio was dingy and grimy, and she strongly suspected it had vermin. But it was  _hers_ , a place to shut out the world, to forget for a few hours about the cases she couldn’t crack, about the bastard who’d killed Bella Culbertson slipping through her fingers, about Mom’s latest fit of not-speaking to her.

About the news. About what the news was saying about men and women like her. About the sickness spreading across the country that no one seemed able to stop or identify. About the loud voices welcoming it as justice.

Just about the only thing that kept her from giving up and giving in to conventionality was the strange little wafer-sized thing, taped to the back of a kitchen drawer. She remembered the pictures it had shown, but she couldn’t look at them now. Sometimes, at three in the morning, when the apartment felt very empty and she felt very alone, she was afraid her mind had made up that whole episode with those two women, a decade ago.

Except she had definitely told her mother that she loved women and not men. And her mother had absolutely, certainly taken it very, very badly. That part was very real.

She leafed through the mail absentmindedly as she put her bag down and opened the refrigerator. She was very good at her job, and the FBI knew it or they wouldn’t have recruited her. But she came home feeling like she had nothing left—

She frowned at the envelope. She didn’t recognize the writing, or the Chicago address. But it was definitely addressed to her. She opened it and read the very short handwritten note:

_Dear Agent Christopher:_

_You don’t know me. But I want to help you._

_Check Bella Culbertson’s books very carefully. Pay attention to the spines._

No signature.

Denise looked up. She checked the blinds. She checked the windows behind them: still locked. She could see the entire apartment at a glance, except the bathroom. Gun in hand, she checked that too. Empty. She even checked under the kitchen sink, though only a child could fit in there.

She couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched.

Abruptly, she holstered her gun, tucked the letter inside her jacket, and got back in her car, alert for any signs of trouble. She turned the radio off and drove all the way back to the office in silence. It was late, but the parking lot still held cars. She showed her ID to the guard and forced herself to walk, not run, all the way upstairs. She put on gloves and dug through crates until she found the box containing the books they’d taken out of Miss Culbertson’s apartment. They’d been about to release them back to her family.

She put aside the energy that had accompanied her all the way from home, and went through the evidence again, slowly, methodically.  _Pay attention to the spines._ Most of these were cheap paperbacks; they barely  _had_ spines. Denise dug to the bottom of the stack and took out the big, heavy dictionary, inscribed on the flyleaf with  _To Isabella with love, from Papa and Mama_ , and the date of Miss Culbertson’s high school graduation.

Denise opened it very carefully, and snapped on a strong light. Now she could see that the inner binding was just coming away from the spine. She eased the one away from the other, the old, weak glue not providing any resistance. She looked—

There was a piece of paper stuck to the inner binding, maybe held in place by that same glue. She pulled it out with tweezers and very gently unfolded it. It was another letter, this one in faded ink and spidery handwriting on thin, cheap paper.

_My darling Bella_ ,

_Do you remember that night at the lake? I do. It’s all I can think about. It was only one night, but it was, so far, the highlight of my short life_ .

The writer went on to describe the evening in rather graphic detail. She glanced at the bottom—

“Agent Christopher?”

She looked up quickly. Her boss was standing in the doorway.

“I thought you went home. It’s late.”

“Look at this.” She showed it to him. “Saxon Culver. He said he barely knew her.”

“He meant the Biblical sense of the word, apparently,” her boss said drily after reading the letter. “Excellent work, Agent Christopher. We’ll get a search warrant and check his house.”

She hesitated. But Agent Rollins was the kind of competent agent she aspired to be. “Sir, I didn’t think to search here myself.” She showed him the letter.

“An anonymous tip?”

“It came to my _apartment_.”

He looked up sharply. She was glad his reaction mirrored hers.

“Did you see anyone when you went home tonight?” he asked after a minute. “Anyone out of place?”

“No.” The postage stamp had been canceled; the letter had not been hand delivered. But someone could have been watching to see what she did after receiving it.

“I’m calling the judge now,” he said after a minute.

Twelve hours later, standing in the middle of Saxon Culver’s living room holding a bloodied sweatshirt that matched the description given by Bella’s mother, Denise had no more answers about the anonymous letter than she had before. But she had  _an_ answer. Ed and Tonya Culbertson had an answer. And Saxon Culver would have no more opportunities to prey on women on whom he fixated.

The next letter came the next year, when she was assigned to Kansas City. It had the same address, which she now knew was a public library in Chicago. Like the first one, it didn’t contain any evidence; it directed her to evidence she already had, helping her crack a violent bank robbery case and earning her a promotion. The third one came shortly after that, and helped her colleague find an abduction victim just minutes before his kidnapper burst in with a loaded gun.

The only clue she could get out of any of them was that all the stamps had the same year, as if they’d been purchased at the same time.

The fourth one was different.

_Dear Agent Christopher:_

_I know you’ve been wondering who I am, how I know all these things, and how I know_ you.  _The truth is, you told me. You told me all about the regrets you had in your career, and the things you wished you could change._

She stiffened.

Had listening to those two ladies been considered carte blanche to let time travelers meddle in her life? Or even her  _future self_ , whatever that meant?

She continued to read.

_This is different. Now there’s a child who needs your help._

She finished the letter and folded it. Cagney and Lacey… they’d asked her to call off her engagement and essentially destroy her relationship with her mother. Some days Denise could still feel the imprint of Mom’s hand on her cheek. But  _this_ — This was asking her to put her professional reputation on the line.

_Be very careful_ , the letter had warned. The writer clearly knew something Denise didn’t, and it was pissing her off. These people from the future thought they could just order her around, tell her what to do and not tell her why?

Though they had told her why. Sort of.  _A child who needs your help_ .

She signed, and started thinking of a pretext under which she could possibly do this.

#

“It wasn’t easy,” Agent Christopher said. “Getting Jessica back from Carol Preston, after Kevin was cured, without implicating either myself or Jessica’s family. But it worked.”

Garcia eyed Jessica across the coffee table. He had provisionally accepted this story. He hadn’t pulled a gun on her again. Unless they’d come back to a timeline where Rittenhouse had subverted  _Agent Christopher_ —

It would be probably the winning stroke if they could pull it off, but he suspected they couldn’t. Maybe that was why they’d simply tried to kill her.

Agent Christopher looked at Rufus. “ _Are_ you the Rufus who wrote those letters?”

He nodded. “You helped me write them like three days ago.”

“I have been waiting for _nearly thirty years_ to talk to you.” Decades of pent-up frustration leaked out. “I thought I’d finally met you in 2016, but all you would tell me is that an _angel_ climbed in your window one night in 1990, and gave you a shoebox of letters to mail.”

Rufus rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, that was Jiya.”

Garcia had more important questions: “ _How_ did you save Lorena and Iris?”

Lorena was beside him on the couch. She knew something wasn’t right. She hadn’t tried to take his hand. But she was _there_ , and Iris was on his other side. His head was still spinning from it all. Every moment or two, he convinced himself this couldn’t be real.

“It wasn’t easy to save them and still keep the time machine out of Rittenhouse’s hands, either,” Agent Christopher admitted. “And we didn’t realize the stakes until it was almost too late, thanks to my informant’s information rationing.” She gave Rufus a pointed look.

“Hey, need to know. We didn’t want to tell you too much and set up a terrible butterfly effect.”

Agent Christopher looked distinctly unimpressed with that explanation.

“We were flying blind,” Rufus added. “But your past self, your alternate self, she definitely approved this.”

“I’ve always known insanity runs in the family,” Agent Christopher muttered.

“How?” Garcia repeated.

Agent Christopher looked at him. “We arrested them.”

“You _what?_ ”

“On suspicion of espionage. We got them out just before Rittenhouse stormed your apartment. You survived the attack, but you decided that the arrest was a fraud and Rittenhouse had taken them as an insurance policy. The police decided _you_ were responsible for their disappearance, and you fled.”

“ _How long,_ ” he growled, “did you let me think Rittenhouse _had_ them?”

“Well, you _were_ remarkably difficult to get a hold of, Flynn. By the time I finally tracked you down, you had a journal that you said had come from a woman from the future, Lucy Preston, which made you much more inclined to believe the letter _I_ showed you from the future. And… their autopsies, which Rufus had included.”

“That was your idea,” Rufus told her.

Garcia’s head was spinning. “How long were they in custody?”

“The better part of two years,” Lorena said. “Agent Christopher told me very quickly that the espionage charges were false, but… they couldn’t let us out.”

“It was protective custody,” Agent Christopher said. “They were in a safe house.”

Lorena made wry face. “We got through it. But no one would tell me much except that you were presumed a terrorist, and it was over a year before I saw you again.”

He stared at her. He didn’t fully understand the details of this alternate timeline, but he understood better, now, why she looked older and grimmer.

All for him. God, Rufus and Agent Christopher put their heads together to save Lorena and Iris, and they  _still_ suffered for him.

But— she was  _alive_ , it wasn’t a trick, it wasn’t…

He cupped her face in both his hands, then pulled her into his arms. She breathed in deeply and shuddered. She had, he realized, at some point, been as sure that he was never coming back as he had been about them.

He let the conversation carry on around them: “Can we go back to the part where Jiya impersonated an angel?” Mason asked.

“Where _is_ Jiya?” Lucy added.

“Yeah, she should definitely be back by now.” Rufus sounded grim. He got up to check the consoles.

Finally, Lorena let go of him, rather reluctantly. “Uh, so,” he said. His voice sounded rough. “You said goodbye to me this morning?”

She nodded.

“I’m, uh…” He hesitated. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“For what?”

That Garcia had doubtless been a better man, less damaged, less of a monster. “You deserved for him to come back to you.”

“What do you mean?”

He wasn’t— ready to answer. She’d seen him hold Jessica at gunpoint, but it hadn’t bothered her nearly as much as he’d thought at the time. After hearing a little of what her last four years had been like, he understood why.

Instead, he got up and joined Mason and Rufus at the console. He couldn’t— he just— he couldn’t right now.

“She’s still in 1969,” Rufus said. “Something’s happened.”

He felt a faint pang of guilt. Jiya probably shouldn’t have jumped without a soldier, but there’d been no way in hell he was leaving just then.

She could’ve waited. Wyatt would’ve been fine.

“Oh— wait,” Rufus said with relief. “She’s jumped.”

Mason turned away to fiddle with another panel. After a minute, Garcia said quietly, “I don’t— know why you did it. But…” He cleared his throat. Words were stunningly inadequate, but owed nonetheless. “But I’m… grateful.”

Rufus looked up at him. “Really? This seems like a good time?”

Yes. It seemed like the best time, because Rufus was busy and they wouldn’t actually have to  _talk_ about it.

Rufus sighed. “Look, I got back, and Jiya was…”

He trailed off, but Garcia knew exactly what he meant. Rufus had only seen the tapering, tail end of Jiya’s time as an avatar of grief and vengeance. The rest of them had gotten the full experience. It had been remarkably, and unfortunately, familiar.

“And I thought… I can’t fix it for her. But I can fix it for some of the team.” He pulled up a new screen. “Besides, you all busted your asses to get me back— and I _know_ it was all of you, so don’t bother with this _it was all their idea_ shit. Lucy told me about Rittenhouse torturing you.”

Garcia winced. He didn’t need to remember that, partially because it had been fairly unpleasant, partially because it had seemed to mean much more to the team than it had to him. He had healed; he’d had worse in his life; he’d moved on.

Then the Lifeboat slammed back into existence, and the hatch opened. The screaming let them know something was very, very wrong.

#

Look. He  _knew_ all the ways this could go wrong, okay? And Jiya had made  _her_ opinion very,  _very_ clear.

But what was he supposed to do? Leave Jess  _in labor_ , to give birth alone, in 1969, at the edge of a toxic waste site?

His ears were ringing from her cries in the small space by the time the Lifeboat landed. He fumbled with her seatbelt; these things definitely weren’t made for women nine months pregnant, and besides, Jiya had made him tie her hands before she let her in the Lifeboat.

He finally just picked Jess up and carried her. They stumbled down the stairs—

He was aware there were kind of a lot of people there. Jiya had mentioned Lorena and Iris Flynn, but he’d been a little distracted.

“Who’s _that?_ ” someone demanded. Must be one of the Flynns. 

Wyatt missed whatever Rufus said except for the word  _evil_ .

And Flynn was leveling his gun at both of them, looking as pissed as Wyatt had ever seen him. Thanks for that, Flynn. Yeah, she was Rittenhouse, but she was also  _actively in labor_ .

“I cannot fucking believe you, Wyatt,” Flynn muttered.

“I can’t believe _any_ of this,” Agent Christopher said. “How is this possible?”

Jiya said something about a doppelgänger that Wyatt missed most of, because Jessica cried out again. “So… you brought her  _here?_ ” someone said.

“I wasn’t gonna leave her to give birth in the ‘60s near a _toxic waste site_ —”

He looked up—

_What_ the  _fuck_ .

Jessica was staring back at him.

_His_ Jessica, the one he remembered, the way she looked in that crumpled picture he still had.

He looked from her to the woman in his arms.

What the  _fuck_ .

“Jiya and Wyatt didn’t know Jessica was back in this timeline,” Rufus said. “And we had no idea he was thinking of bringing _her_ here.”

“Thank you, Rufus, but I was more concerned with how two Jessicas can exist in the same time and place, and if the fabric of reality is about to collapse in on us,” Agent Christopher said.

“No, reality looks stable,” Mason said somewhere behind Wyatt. “Are we sure she’s not… faking?”

Wyatt couldn’t turn to stare at him in disbelief, but Denise, Flynn, and the woman who had to be Lorena all did.

“We modified the Lifeboat,” Jiya said, coming down the stairs and giving them a wide berth. “To… you know.” She gave Jessica a significant look. “So we could go back and save Rufus. That must be how Jessica… Jessicas… can be here safely.”

“… does that mean there’s a second Wyatt running around, too?” Jessica asked, staring at her body double in disbelief. The— the new Jessica asked. The _old_ Jessica?

God, was he hallucinating?

“No,” Agent Christopher said. “Wyatt left in the Lifeboat this morning. He wasn’t here when things changed.”

The other Jessica moaned. “Do you think we could focus here?” Wyatt snapped. He _desperately_ wanted— _needed_ — to talk to Jessica— he could barely breathe with how much he needed that— but— but one problem at a time, and the Jessica he was holding was _in labor_.

“She might’ve been better off in 1969, Wyatt,” Agent Christopher said. “For me to find an obstetrician with the right security clearance and get them here—”

“We’re taking her to the hospital!”

Agent Christopher looked at him in disbelief. “The nearest military hospital is hours away, and she’s certainly not leaving this bunker for a civilian one. She’s a security risk.”

“Uh, isn’t it also a security risk to have her here?” Rufus muttered. “Speaking as the person who, you know, ended up dead last time.”

“Then get the obstetrician,” Wyatt snapped.

“It’ll be hours—”

“She doesn’t have that long.” Flynn watched Jessica critically. At least he’d put down the damn gun. “Mason, clean out your room. It’s smallest and most easily cleaned—”

“What about the bathroom?” Connor objected. “It has a drain already for all the… fluids.”

“Do you,” Agent Christopher said, “have _any_ idea how long labor can last? Do _you_ want to hold it that long?”

“— plastic sheeting,” Flynn continued.

“If not, old newspapers,” Lorena said.

“And gloves,” Flynn added.

Wyatt  _looked_ at him. “Do you actually have any idea what the fuck you’re doing?”

“Iris came early in a white-out blizzard. Garcia and I got to deliver her on the kitchen floor,” Lorena said wryly.

“Wyatt, congratulations, you put it in there— if, uh, that’s _really_ your kid, anyway— you get to help get it out,” Flynn added, with a completely insincere smile, the dick.

The new Jessica— old Jessica, whatever, the one who hopefully  _was not evil_ — let out a soft  _huff_ of surprise. Oh, God, she looked stricken.

“I— Jess?” he managed.

“Which of us are you talking to?” she retorted with asperity.

“Look— we’ll— _you._ ” He helped the other Jess into a chair while Lucy and Mason started hauling things out of his room. “How’s this possible?”

“While you guys were running around saving the Clean Water Act, I jumped to 1990 and handed young Rufus a box of letters to mail to Agent Christopher so she’d intervene for Jessica and the Flynns,” Jiya said.

Wyatt stared at her. “That’s  _insane_ .”

“Yeah? You’re welcome,” Rufus said.

“But— what— what about Kevin?”

“He’s fine,” Jessica said. New/old Jessica. “He got the stem cell treatment by the time the FBI got me out of there.”

Other Jessica gave her a look so full of venom, Wyatt was startled. Then her face screwed up in pain again, and he wondered if he’d imagined it.

“Look,” he said again, crossing the concrete floor to her. “I know this is crazy, I know— I know I’m not the guy you said goodbye to this morning, I know we have a long conversation ahead of us, but— you don’t know how glad I am to see you.”

New/old Jessica crossed her arms across her chest. “Yeah? Seems like you must’ve been pretty  _glad_ to see her, too.”

Jesus, time travel problems. When your resurrected wife is pissed off at you because you got your  _other_ resurrected wife pregnant.

“Wyatt!” Flynn snapped, as other Jessica cried out again. His head was spinning. He went back to other Jessica, picked her up, and carried her into that little room, now empty of everything except a chair and a cot. Lorena was there, and Agent Christopher.

Jessica cried out again, the noise echoing painfully in here. Flynn handed him a pair of gloves. Oh, God, this was gonna be a long day.

#

Lucy used rubbing alcohol from the bunker’s first aid kit to wipe down the plastic sheeting stashed in one of the cupboards. She put it aside to dry and started pulling newspapers out of an old, dusty box, looking for ones that were a  _little_ younger—

“You do know what birth is like, right, Lucy?” Flynn asked, nodding to the rubbing alcohol. “It’s not going to stay clean for long.”

“I just wanted to minimize the number of three-decade-old germs potentially making their way into her traumatized vagina.”

“Fair enough.” He reached for a whole stack of papers—

“Those are historic! I’ll find some others—”

“Well, now they’re going to be useful.” He ruthlessly pulled them out of her grasp.

It wasn’t long before the yelling really escalated. Connor retreated to the Lifeboat console and pulled his headphones firmly over his ears, and Jiya and Rufus disappeared into their room, but Lucy’s sense of duty kept her in the main living area in case they needed… anything. Anything she could provide without actually, you know, looking.

Jessica-1 came out of Wyatt’s room and busied herself in the kitchen. Lucy wondered rather absently where her  _own_ room was now, considering  they’d apparently rearranged . Then Jessica sat down across from her, and handed Lucy a mug of tea.

“So that’s… Wyatt’s baby?” she asked. She looked a little lost.

“Yep.” Lucy hesitated. “You didn’t— um, you didn’t exist in the timeline we came from. I mean, that _was_ you.”

“I get that in my _head_ , it’s just… a little weird, you know, that the man you thought was your husband is having babies with another woman.”

“Probably doesn’t help that the “other woman” looks _exactly_ like you.” Well, almost. Jessica-1’s hair was different.

Jessica snorted. “No.”

Lucy hesitated again. “Look, I’ll… tell you the same thing I told that Jessica when I thought she was— I mean, when Wyatt got her back. He loves you. You— you were dead, you died in our old timeline, and… he never forgave himself. I’ve lost count of these trips and already by our third, he was trying to figure out how to get you back. He sent you a telegram from 1962 to tell you to go home with him the night you, um, died. When that didn’t work he  _stole_ the time machine and went back to 1983 to prevent the parents of the guy who supposedly killed you from ever meeting. He ended up in some off-the-books government black site for that one. He got  _court-martialed_ .”

Jessica looked wistful.

“Granted, the last time he thought he got you back, you turned out to be secretly working for our worst enemies and you— she— kidnapped Jiya and stole the Lifeboat and Rufus ended up dead, so, um.”

“So that might put a bit of a crimp in things?” Jessica guessed.

“It’s possible.”

The wistful look intensified. “I mean, we’ve had our problems,” Jessica said. “Did I leave him, in your old timeline?”

“Uh… you died in 2012.”

“Right. I keep, uh... forgetting that.” She shook her head. “Um… so I left him in 2013. We’ve been kind of off and on. He’s seen other women, I’ve seen other men. I mean, each of us _knew_ , it was while we were on a break, it wasn’t like…”

“I understand.” Boy, did she ever understand.

“He honestly…” A long pause. “He spiraled. Big time. I was used to not knowing if he were alive or dead when he was _gone_ , but there were times I didn’t know and he was _here_. And I couldn’t do anything except watch, I _tried_ …”

The pain in that one syllable told Lucy an entire history.

“But then— he shows up one night, late in 2016, and he said— he said he wanted to give things another shot. That he really meant it this time. And I asked him why, and he said… he said he’d seen wonderful and terrible things, and he’d realized just how _precious_ what we’d had together was.”

“So, I… I mean, we tried again. Had some rough patches. Then I found out he was dead, and then I get this round-the-clock DHS security detail no one will explain, and _then_ after I mourned him for six weeks, I find out he’s alive but I can’t see him because he’s in a secret government bunker. Finally like three days ago Agent Christopher brings me out here, and he’s here, and now suddenly he’s a totally different Wyatt and he’s having babies with another woman.” 

“He may have different memories,” Lucy said after a minute. “But Wyatt in any timeline is… I mean, deep down, he’s fundamentally the same guy.”

The Wyatt who this Jessica had left had a lot in common with the Wyatt Lucy knew… which meant the reverse was also true.

“Look, Jessica, Wyatt loves you,” she added. “When that Jessica stole the Lifeboat and got Rufus killed? It was because he was so determined to give her another chance, I mean, he _really_ wanted her, you, back… that he, you know, lied to the rest of us about his concerns. Which wasn’t great. But.”

“Wyatt, do something really ill-considered and reckless out of the goodness of his heart? Yeah, _that’s_ not familiar at all.”

Lucy snorted. “Sounds like he hasn’t changed as much as you were afraid of.”

A particularly loud cry from Connor’s old room, aka the storage closet, aka the delivery room, got both their attention. Lucy winced.

“So what’s he gonna do about, you know… _her?_ ” Jessica asked after a minute.

Lucy shook her head. “I have no idea. I mean, it’s not up to him, it’s up to Agent Christopher. She won’t be letting that Jessica go any time soon.”

“Thanks,” Jessica-1 said after a minute. “For talking to me. About this.”

Lucy gave her a bright smile. “Sure.”

Jessica went back to her and Wyatt’s room, saying she wanted to try to take a nap. Lucy stayed where she was. Flynn opened the door. “Lucy, we need—”

_Oh. My. God_ .

There was  _so_ much blood.

“— _breathe_ , Lucy.” Flynn closed the door behind him. The sound snapped her out of it, and she squeezed her eyes shut.

“Sorry,” she said. “What do you need?”

“Clean water. Find some buckets, wipe them down.”

“Right.” She wanted to ask how it was going… but she was afraid to. Besides, if it wasn’t going _well_ , she didn’t want him saying that right outside the door.

She got Connor to help clean the buckets with rubbing alcohol, but she almost regretted it when he kept wincing at the sound of the screams. “Dear God, that sounds unpleasant.”

“How do you think _you_ got here?”

After they were done, she put her own headphones on and worked steadily. She looked up quickly when the door opened again. It was Lorena Flynn, and she didn’t look panicked or hurried.

“Need anything?” Lucy asked.

“It’s just too crowded in there.”

So Lucy went back to her work. Lorena washed her hands thoroughly, then went into Flynn’s room— Flynns’ room— to check on Iris and change her clothes. It was a while before she came out again. She paused in front of the door for a moment, then came to sit in the chair across from Lucy.

“Judging by the way my husband looks at you—”

“It’s not like that.”

Lorena raised her eyebrows, and let the silence stretch out a moment. Her voice became a few degrees cooler: “I hadn’t assumed that it was.”

“Look,” Lucy sighed. “It _was_ like that. With someone else. We started a relationship and then suddenly his wife was alive again. So… I wanted to clear that up.”

“Ah. Wyatt?” Lorena guessed.

“It doesn’t matter who,” Lucy said after a minute.

“Must’ve been hard.”

Lucy didn’t say anything.

“I was going to say, judging by how Garcia looks at you… you know what happened. You know what he’s not telling me. And,” she added, “based on the fact that your first impulse was to make sure I understand the truth of the situation between you and him, you’re going to tell me.”

Lucy picked up her mug of now-cold tea, mostly to have something in her hand. She looked at Lorena across the top as she sipped, not sure she liked the cool assurance of that assumption. “Maybe telling you the truth would hurt him,” she said, after letting the silence stretch out herself. “Maybe I don’t want that.”

They looked at each other.

“I don’t want to hurt him either,” Lorena said. “But I don’t know how to do that if I don’t know what’s under this _gulf_ between us. The Garcia I knew… he’s never not told me anything before.” She looked down at her hands, then up at Lucy. “So that’s why I’m asking you.” Her self-possession eased just a bit into appeal.

Lucy thought for a while. “In my timeline,” she began finally. “You and Iris were murdered by a Rittenhouse hit squad that came for all three of you after Flynn cracked their financial records. It sounds like you knew that already.”

Lorena nodded.

“He escaped. Two weeks later, I visited him from five years in the future and brought him my journal for him to use in fighting Rittenhouse.”

“In 2016, he broke into Mason Industries and stole Connor Mason’s time machine. I was recruited to follow him through history, along with Rufus and Wyatt. He was trying to change history to erase Rittenhouse, and… bring you and Iris back to life.”

“We… fought each other for weeks. Months. Across four centuries. He killed innocent people,” Lucy said bluntly. “I stopped him from killing, from trying to kill a child, who would pass on the Rittenhouse legacy. In return, he kidnapped me, and threatened Wyatt and Rufus to get me to help him kill some other people.”

Lorena watched her carefully.

“And he arranged for Rufus to be shot in the past, trying to strand us out of his way. Um… after we helped each other take down most of Rittenhouse, he was arrested and sentenced to life in prison. But we needed him, so we broke him out.”

Lorena was quiet for a moment. “If that’s true,” she finally said, “then why do you look at him the way you do?”

Lucy didn’t take refuge in pretending to misunderstand. “He’s done terrible things,” she said slowly. “He collaborated with the Nazis trying to destabilize the United States. He assassinated President Lincoln.”

Lorena flinched at that, startled.

“But he’s not a terrible man.” She looked down at her mug for a while. “He was trying to end Rittenhouse, and he was trying to bring you and Iris back to life. The things they want? Well…” She hesitated. “Rufus described it as a cross between the Hunger Games and the Handmaid’s Tale.”

Lorena winced again.

“I asked him once what he would do if he got you back,” Lucy added. “He said he would walk away. Because he’d done things too terrible to… to go on being a husband and a father.”

Lorena studied her. “What did you say to that?”

“I told him he was wrong,” she said. “Admittedly… he was trying to drag me out of the way so he could shoot a young boy at the time.”

“I appreciate your honesty,” Lorena said finally.

“I’m not done.”

Lorena raised her eyebrows. Lucy considered her next words carefully.

“I didn’t tell you this so you could walk out of his life and take Iris with you,” she said finally. “You don’t owe it to him to stay. But you owe it to him to listen to the truth _from him_. To weigh the man he is now against the things he’s done.”

“If I did walk out.” Lorena sounded startled. “Iris and I. Would he try to _stop_ us?”

“No.”

Lorena looked pained.

“I… had a sister,” Lucy added. “He, uh, the first trip he ever made back in time, he accidentally erased her from history.”

Lorena looked startled. Lucy was happy for Flynn, she was happy for Wyatt, she was  _so_ happy for them… but she couldn’t stop this aching pang that they had gotten the people they loved back, and she had not. But Jiya had jumped to 1990, long after Carol and Henry had been supposed to meet. That wouldn’t have been enough to get Amy back.

“And… he kidnapped me. But…” Lucy hesitated. “I can’t speak for Rufus, I can’t speak for anyone he killed. But for myself, I’ve… I’ve forgiven him, I think.”

Sometimes she even thought they were friends. Allies, certainly, if occasionally prickly ones. He could be startlingly kind, and he’d watched out for her when she’d really needed that, without asking or expecting anything in return.

“I wish I’d known him before,” she finished finally. “But… I’m not sorry to know him now.” She focused her gaze on Lorena’s face again. “You should be careful what you ask for,” she added, a little wryly.

Lorena shook her head slowly. “I wanted honesty. And you gave it to me. Thank you for that.”

“Whatever you do, don’t keep Iris away from him,” Lucy said quietly. “Just… don’t.”

“I can believe in time travel. But I can’t believe any Garcia, in any timeline, could ever hurt our daughter.”

“Good. You’re right.”

Lorena hesitated. “You didn’t ask about my timeline.”

“What was your timeline like?”

“Rittenhouse figured out what had happened,” Lorena said after a minute. “They realized Garcia thought they had us. So they decided to manipulate him that way.”

“They… sent him body parts.”

Lucy gasped.

Lorena nodded. “Not ours, obviously. From— they’d found the body of a young girl, somewhere. They sent… an ear, and a few fingers.”

Lucy was going to be  _sick_ .

“Garcia went berserk,” Lorena added bluntly. “Not long after that, I… saw him, for the first time. He wouldn’t even look me in the eye.”

“Oh my God. Lorena, I’m so sorry.”

“What was the alternative? Violent death for me and my daughter? Letting Rittenhouse run the world?”

“I’m sorry those _were_ your alternatives.”

Lorena’s tension eased. “Thank you.” She was quiet for a minute. “After the night we were arrested, I didn’t think I’d ever see him again,” she said slowly. “Whatever was going on, I thought— I was the only one who could see that Iris was safe, now.” She shook her head. “Our life was espionage charges and three-letter agencies and safe houses, and I felt like a guppy in a shark tank.”

“So I learned… how to get through. To do whatever I had to to keep her safe. Feeling alone against the world? And then, the way he came back the first time?” She shook her head. “I got through that. We’ll get through this, if he’ll let us.”

Speak of the devil: the door opened, and Flynn came out. He did a double take at the two of them sitting there together. He looked at Lorena, expression taut and grim, and then at Lucy. Lucy stared back calmly.

Lorena turned to look over her shoulder. “You need me?”

“Ah… no, I just, uh… I just came out for some, uh, to see if we have any disinfectant.”

“Disinfectant?” Lucy said.

“Yeah, the smell’s getting a little…”

Lucy’s eyebrows went way up.

Lorena snorted. “If anyone ever tells you giving birth is dignified, Lucy, they’re full of shit. And so, often, is the labor process.”

“Oh,” Lucy said. “ _Oh_.”

They both helped him look. Jessica’s yells took on a noticeably different tone, and Flynn hastened back inside the room. Lorena was the one to find the disinfectant, and took it in. Then she went to check on Iris again. Lucy hesitated, then went into the room that, by process of elimination, must be hers.

In her timeline it had been Connor’s room. Now it had two beds squeezed in, but only one showed signs of use. Lucy tugged off her shoes and toppled onto the bed, trying to block out all the noise. She closed her eyes just for a minute…

Someone was pounding on her door. “Lucy!”

She sat bolt upright as the door opened and Denise appeared inside. Her gun was in her hand, pointed at the floor.

“What is it?” Lucy demanded.

“Don’t move.” Denise checked the whole room— not hard, considering everything was in sight except for storage closet and under the bed. Then she climbed up on the bed and yanked the grate out of the vent. She relaxed, and put the grate back.

“What _happened?_ ”

Denise climbed down. “Jessica’s gone.”

“Which one?”

“The evil one.”

“What?” Jessica-2 was in _labor_. “What happened? You mean— escaped, right?” She fumbled for her shoes.

“We left her to rest after the birth. The door was locked, and after JFK in the old bunker, I’d made sure every ventilation shaft here was locked down. Then Wyatt went in to check on Sherwin and—”

“Wait, who’s Sherwin? She gave birth already?”

“She gave birth five hours ago. You’ve been dead to the world. Wyatt went to check on Sherwin and he was there alone with just a note.”

“So how’d she get out?”

“The ventilation shafts, apparently. Somehow.”

“But she just gave birth!”

“She was motivated,” Denise said grimly.

“So— what now?” Lucy scrambled to her feet and followed Denise into the common area. Everyone was out there. Flynn was standing near Connor, Jiya and Rufus, and Lorena and Iris in the middle of the room, gun drawn. Jessica-1 was holding a bundled-up red thing, looking shellshocked. Wyatt was— Wyatt was hurrying down the hall, gun also pointed down.

“The guards never saw her,” he said grimly. “No sign of her.”

“Damn it,” Denise muttered.

Lucy picked up the sheet of paper on the couch. It only had a few lines:

_Emma’s got a backup base outside San Benito, near the national park. You might get some good intel there._

_Keep him safe, Wyatt._

Her eyebrows went up.

“I’ve notified my office,” Denise was telling Jessica. “We’ll freeze all your bank accounts and put alerts out on all your forms of identification. And we’ll have to take your parents and your brother and sister into protective custody. We have to expect she’ll impersonate you. You’ll be here a while, I’m afraid.”

“Of course she’s going to be here,” Wyatt said, holstering his gun and joining Jess and— Sherwin? “She’s sure not going anywhere else. Not with him.”

“I have some formula on the way,” Denise added to Jessica, who looked overwhelmed.

“Oh good.”

“What about this backup base?” Lucy asked.

Wyatt barely glanced in her direction. “It’s a trap.”

“Or… maybe it’s not.”

“We’ll check it out,” Denise said.

Lucy went over to Wyatt and Jess, looking at the blanket-wrapped bundle. “Is this…”

“This is my son.” Wyatt tried to play it cool and _failed miserably_. “Sherwin, uh… we’re still working on a middle name.”

_We_ , Jessica mouthed, and Lucy snorted, as Wyatt lifted the baby out of her arms and cradled him gently, beaming down at him in a credible imitation of a floodlight.

“You wanna hold him?” Wyatt added.

“Mmm,” Lucy said, trying to sound like that was a really, really attractive treat she was being offered. “Um.”

Jessica’s turn to laugh.

“C’mon, you won’t drop him. Here.” Wyatt held Sherwin out, and Lucy carefully took him.

“Congratulations,” she said, looking down at the little guy, and then glancing up again.

“Thanks.” Wyatt’s face kicked out a few more lumens. He looked at Jess.

“Don’t look at me, I literally had no part in this process.”

Wyatt’s expression turned serious. “Jess…”

“It’s just a little overwhelming, okay, Wyatt? I need a little time to—”

Lucy handed Sherwin back to Wyatt and made herself scarce. She could use a shower.

She wandered into the common area a while later. “Daddy, I explained this to you yesterday,” Iris was saying patiently.

Lucy looked over from where she was making a sandwich, and smiled. Iris had something up on a laptop that looked like homework. It made sense that Lorena and other Flynn would’ve tried to keep up with her schooling.

This Flynn looked down at her with a helpless smile. “I’m afraid you’re just gonna have to explain it to me again if you want my help.”

Iris sighed.

Lorena’s whole face lit up when she laughed. Flynn gave her a hesitant smile, his face echoing the warmth in hers. Compared to the way he’d looked just this morning, his default expression? He looked like a man slowly coming back to life.

Lucy rummaged through the refrigerator for the cheese. When she looked again, Lorena and Flynn had stopped laughing. Or, she was pretty sure, noticing anyone else besides each other.

Lorena leaned forward, and kissed him gently. Flynn didn’t respond, just stared down at her, wistful, wry, tortured,  _longing_ .

Lucy realized she was staring. She wrenched herself back to what she was doing. Her throat suddenly ached. She hoped she wasn’t getting a cold—

She snuck another look, just as Lorena very deliberately pressed another kiss to Flynn’s lips. Flynn’s whole body shuddered. He very slowly brought his hand up to Lorena’s hair, cupping the back of her head in one big palm. He closed his eyes and leaned into her like a plant turning towards the sun—

Lucy turned away, not sure why she was so shocked, not sure why she felt like she’d just had a mortal blow. She blindly finished off her sandwich, fumbled everything back in the cupboard, turned away—

Jiya was watching her from across the room.

Lucy gave her a totally undeserved glare and shut herself in her room. Her hands shook. She nearly dropped the plate before she got it down on the nightstand. She dropped onto the bed and buried her face in her pillow.

A few minutes passed. Someone knocked gently. “Lucy?” It was Jiya.

Lucy didn’t respond.

She didn’t fall asleep. After a while, she forced herself to get up again, and leaf glumly through a book on Indian boarding schools, looking for ways Rittenhouse might make that whole clusterfuck even worse. It was a really depressing task, and it perfectly suited her mood, but after a while she had to admit she wasn’t seeing anything.

Another knock. “Lucy?” It was Denise.

Lucy didn’t say anything. She dropped back against the pillow, and put the book over her face. The familiar smell eased the pain around her heart just a little.

She was pretty much a terrible person, wasn’t she? Someone she cared about got his murdered family back, and this was how she reacted?

Jessica and Lorena… she’d talked down both of the wives of the men she’d… well. She had loved Wyatt. She could’ve loved Flynn, she was pretty sure. And she knew she’d done the right thing, the  _only_ thing. Bu t that didn’t make her feel nearly as much better as it should have.

After a while, she dozed. Another knock woke her: “Lucy.”

She swallowed.

“What do you want,” she said after a long moment.

Another pause. Just when she thought he’d gone away, and she wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed, Flynn said, “Can I open the door?”

She sat up. She rubbed her hands over her face, then through her hair. She sighed. “Yes.”

He closed the door behind him and leaned against it, looking at her for a moment. His face was serious, unreadable. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

He looked obscurely disappointed. Then he looked down. “I, uh… didn’t realize you were watching. I’m sorry.”

Her face heated until it could have stood in for the surface of the sun. “I shouldn’t have  _been_ — I— I’m  _sorry_ , Flynn. I didn’t mean for the whole team to see me make a spectacle of myself.” Maybe she could convince Denise to send her on an urgent solo mission to, say, Inner Mongolia. For the next ten years.

“You didn’t make a spectacle of yourself, Lucy,” Flynn said. “I only started to wonder when I found the cheese and mayonnaise in the plate cupboard.”

She snorted.

“This is an awkward conversation,” he added, “and, uh, maybe I shouldn’t— have— but I didn’t— I wanted to be sure you were all right, and—”

“And not addressing the elephant in the bunker would be even more awkward.”

He nodded once.

“Flynn, I’m not heartbroken. We weren’t— that’s not what we were.”

They could have been, maybe, one day. Lucy wasn’t entirely sure  _what_ she felt for or about him. But if she was mourning anything, it wasn’t an ending, not like with Wyatt. It was— the loss of a possibility.

This wasn’t  just a feeling of  _oh my God, Flynn loves someone else_ . It was  _oh my God, I don’t have anyone any more_ , and  _oh my God, I’m the only one alone and broken now_ .

“I’m just,” she added, then looked down.

“Lonely,” he said quietly.

She looked up fast. He was studying her, expression serious.

She didn’t answer, but she had to blink a few times, and swallow. She turned away. “I’m fine.”

“You’re in a bunker full of people who would die for you, Lucy,” he pointed out. “Who— care about you.”

But they all— had other people they cared about more. And Lucy wasn’t that  _selfish_ . She just— she was the only one in this position.

“I just need to get used to things,” she said. “I’m tired. It’s been a long day. There are four more people here than when I left this morning. It’s just a lot. Okay? Just give me a day or two.”

He did not seem convinced, but he didn’t push the issue. “If that’s what you want…”

“It is.” She gave him a smile that tried to be sincere. Then, before he could leave: “Hey?”

“I’m really, really happy for you,” she said quietly. “I know it may not look like it, but Flynn, I’m _overjoyed_. They seem— they seem lovely. And I can’t wait to get to know them.”

His slow smile startled her with its warmth. “Thank you, Lucy.”

When he was gone, she buried her burning face in her pillow again. It was an awkward conversation. She was glad they’d had it. But that didn’t make this whole situation any less…

It  _did_ hurt. She could be hurt and happy at the same time. Today she was just shocked from all of it. Wyatt getting his real Jessica back, Wyatt having a  _son_ all of the sudden, Flynn getting Lorena and Iris back… she was shocked, and it was  _late_ . It would still hurt in the morning but she thought the joy-to-loss ratio would feel a bit more wholesome.

She hoped so. She really did want to get to know Lorena. She seemed— it didn’t surprise Lucy  at all that she seemed like Flynn’s equal. But the specific  _shape_ that took,  _that_ surprised her.

After a while, someone knocked.

Lucy glared at the door, and waited, but they didn’t announce themselves. But if she didn’t let anyone else in besides Flynn— oh, God, she didn’t want to think about how that would look to Lorena. “What?”

Jiya opened the door. “Hey.”

“I’m fine,” Lucy said.

Jiya looked at her, expression warm and sympathetic and totally unconvinced. “After Rufus died, you were up with me  _four nights running_ when I had screaming nightmares.”

“I know.”

“Trust me, Lucy. I know what people look like when they’re not okay.”

“You’re right.” Lucy’s voice came out bitter even to her own ears. “Is that what you wanted to hear? No, I’m not okay. I’m a terrible jealous little person, and I’m just going to stay in here where I can’t play peeping Tom again, and—”

Jiya sat down beside her on the bed and gave her a hug.

Lucy sniffled, and narrowly escaped crying messily down Jiya’s back.

“You’re the second least terrible person I know,” Jiya said in her ear. “I mean, I’m contractually obligated to say Rufus, but even if I weren’t—”

“It would still be true.”

Jiya nodded, and gently pulled back. “And, look, Flynn should’ve known better than to be kissing in front of you any—”

Lucy shook her head vigorously. “He thought she was dead for four years. And I actually _really_ don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay.”

“I— it’s not actually that bad, you know? It’s just, everything, all at once. In the morning—”

“Your coping reservoir will be full again?”

“Exactly.”

Jiya nodded. “So this is a case of if we leave you alone tonight you’ll actually be better in the morning, and not just pretending?”

Lucy considered. “I think so.”

“Okay.” Jiya hesitated. “I know it’s not easy? Having the rest of us get someone back, and— I’m not asking you to talk about it,” she added quickly, as Lucy closed her eyes. “But it’s _not_ easy, and I understand, and everyone else will, too. And if they don’t? Let Rufus or I handle it.”

Lucy nodded. She didn’t think she actually would. But she appreciated the offer.

Jiya stood. “Do you need anything?”

Lucy shook her head.

“Uh, so Wyatt and Jess and the kid’ve gone to bed— or sleepless purgatory, I guess— and so’ve the Flynns. It’s quiet out there right now, if you wanna…”

“Yeah. Thanks, Jiya.”

After Jiya left, Lucy was just about to go brush her teeth and wash her face when she saw her still-untouched sandwich and realized how hungry she was. The bunker was roughly the temperature of a refrigerator anyway, right? The sandwich wouldn’t have gone bad.

Someone knocked.

“Grand Central Station is closed for the evening,” she said, picking up the sandwich.

“Lucy, I think you should come out here,” Denise said.

“Look, I promise, whatever it is, I’ll handle it in the morning. Okay?” Rittenhouse hadn’t jumped, so anything else—

The door opened.

Lucy dropped the plate.

It shattered.

Amy leaned back out the door. “Uh, cleanup on aisle five?” Then she turned back to look at Lucy.

Lucy stared at her.

“Are you,” she began. “You’re not— you’re not real. You— you _can’t_ be.”

“She’s real, Lucy,” Denise said gently, behind Amy.

Lucy stared from one woman to the other. This didn’t look quite like the Amy she remembered. She was older. Her face was thinner, her hair shorter. Would— if this were a dream, wouldn’t she look the same? And she sounded—

“How,” Lucy breathed. “ _How?_ ”

“How what?” Amy looked at her blankly. “Do you know me this time?”

Lucy took a step towards her, then another. She barely noticed when she stepped in her sandwich. Another step, and Amy didn’t disappear. Another. Lucy pinched herself hard enough to hurt.

“Lucy, what are you _doing?_ ” Amy asked.

Lucy reached out hesitantly, and touched Amy’s shoulder. Amy’s sweater was soft, her body solid underneath. “Amy.”

“What’s _wrong?_ ” Amy was starting to look very freaked out.

Lucy took another step closer, and touched Amy’s face. Her fingers were shaking.

“Lucy, c’mere.” Amy pulled her into a hug. “What’s going on?”

But Lucy’s breath left her in a shocked rush. She clung fiercely to Amy, crushing her against her. Looking over Amy’s shoulder, she discovered they had an audience: Rufus and Jiya were smiling a little, and Flynn and Wyatt had both come out of their respective rooms.

“How,” Lucy begged, voice cracking. “Tell me _how_ before I believe too much.”

Denise was watching them carefully. “You know her now?”

“What? _Of course_ I know her, she’s my _sister!_ ”

A very satisfied smile spread across Denise’s face. She held out an envelope.

Lucy snatched it, still clinging to Amy. The outside said,  _Do not open until you’ve met Rufus Carlin_ .

Lucy looked at Rufus.

Inside was a handwritten note, and it started with yesterday’s date.  _By this date, send the team back to Berkeley in 1979. Preferably not too far before that date. Make sure Henry Wallace and Carol Preston meet. And make him stop smoking._

_P.S. It’s for Lacey._

Lucy stared at it blankly. Then she looked back to Rufus. “I don’t understand.”

They ended up on the couch. Lucy was just never letting Amy out of her sight again. She hugged her again, burying her face in Amy’s shoulder and breathing deeply. She smelled of the green tea and lime shampoo that had succeeded the hibiscus shampoo that had succeeded the strawberry shampoo.

She looked up, and saw Wyatt and Flynn watching with very similar little smiles from across the room. She smiled back at them. It didn’t hurt any more. Nothing hurt any more, because she wasn’t— she wasn’t  _alone_ any more.

“I didn’t want anyone to say anything until I knew it had worked,” Rufus began, drawing on some scratch paper. “I knew we couldn’t get Amy back just by going back to 1990, so I figured, as long as I’m meddling with history, why not meddle a little more? So, in the alternate timeline Jiya and I created with the letters, I asked Agent Christopher to send the team back to make sure your parents met. By the time I knew we’d enter this timeline.”

“But Emma— Emma said—”

Rufus shrugged. “I guess she’s not as smart as she thinks she is.”

“Or at least not as smart as _we_ are,” Jiya added, smirking.

“Plus, your dad stopped smoking, which meant your mom never got lung cancer, which meant, in this alternate timeline, she never sent Emma back to erase Amy.”

“What about the Hindenburg?”

“Well, the Hindenburg was our first mission, right? So whenever Agent Christopher sent the team back to fix it, it would be after the Hindenburg.”

Lucy stared at him. Then at the complicated-looking diagram he’d drawn. “I,” she began. “I can’t believe you… I can’t believe you figured this  _out_ .”

He shrugged. “What’s the point of being a genius if you can’t help your friends?”

Her eyes welled up with tears. She threw her arms around his neck and wept until she realized she was probably making him really, really uncomfortable. She pulled back and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. Amy handed her some tissues. Lucy looked up, and saw the rest of them, and her embarrassment eased.

“Bunker’s dusty all of a sudden,” Rufus observed, his own voice strangely thick.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “Rufus, _thank you_. I can’t— I can never—”

“You guys brought me back to life, Lucy,” he said. “All of you. I was just repaying the favor.”

Lucy almost lost it all over again. “Wait,” she said to Denise. “Why did you ask if I knew her?”

“Because the Lucy who went back to 1979 had no memory of a sister,” Denise said. “She left to go back and save her on my instructions from your Rufus— this Rufus— but she came back to a sister she didn’t know.”

“She had _no_ idea who I was,” Amy added.

“That’s why I suggested the trip not be too long before we were due to get back,” Rufus said. “I’d watched you remember a sister who didn’t exist. I didn’t want to make Amy spend years with a sister who didn’t remember _she_ existed.”

Thinking through all that hurt both her head and her heart. The only possible response was to blink the tears out of her eyes and hug Amy tightly again.

“Wait,” she said after a minute. “Mom never smoked?”

“Mom hates smoking.”

“… oh.” Lucy blinked. Present tense, which meant— “So she’s alive? She’s not sick?”

“Yeah, she’s… fine.”

Right: in this timeline, Jessica had also never been Rittenhouse, which meant Jiya had never been stranded in 1885 Chinatown, which meant Emma had never shot Carol there.

Which meant—

Lucy looked at Denise fast. “My mother is Rittenhouse,” she said.

“We know,” Denise said. “She kidnapped you. She kidnapped _me_. Trust me, we know.”

“Wait,” Amy said. “ _Mom_ is part of the creepy cult you told me about?”

“Yeah, she’s one of the ringleaders.”

“What about Dad?”

“What _about_ Dad?”

“Is he also—”

Lucy’s head swam with a vengeance. “Dad’s alive?” she managed.

“Was he…?”

“He— he was dead,” Lucy said. “In my original timeline. And then after you were gone he’d never met Mom, and—”

“Wait,” Amy said. “What?”

“Yeah, turns out he wasn’t my biological father.”

“ _What?_ ”

Lucy looked at Denise. “We need to compare notes on our timelines.”

“Agreed,” Denise said. “Rufus and I have been doing some of that while you slept.”

“Right. Sleep. That’s a thing.” It was a thing she should probably try, because she was— confused, and ecstatic, and—

She looked up fast. “Is that why my room has two beds?”

Denise nodded, smiling a little.

The weight of all this planning, all this trust the team must’ve had in Denise and Denise in those mysterious letters— all this done to fix the holes in their lives—

“I have two options,” she said unsteadily, “and I’m going to bed, because the other choice is to ugly cry in the middle of the bunker.”

To  _bed_ , but not necessarily to sleep. Definitely not to sleep. They had  _so much_ to catch up on, and of course, Lucy was never letting Amy out of her sight again, so she’d just have to learn to do without sleep, and…

“Let me clean up that sandwich,” Amy said.

“I can do th—”

“Nope. You look like you’re about to pass out. Just tell me where to find the stuff.”

“Here. I’ll show you,” Wyatt said. “I’m Wyatt. I’m, uh… I’m really, really glad to meet you, Amy.”

Amy looked at him like he were an idiot. “Wyatt, we’ve met.”

“We have?”

“Yeah, I needed to kick your ass for messing with my big sister’s heart.”

Lucy’s coping reservoir was  _so_ empty that barely registered. After the various laughs and choking noises died down, she said, “We  _definitely_ need to compare notes.”

Denise handed her a damp paper towel. Lucy looked at it blankly. “What’s this for?”

“You’re tracking mayonnaise through the bunker.”

Lucy had not even noticed.

Wyatt helped Amy clean up the mess. Flynn very hesitantly sat on the far arm of the couch. “I’m, uh… I’m happy for you, Lucy,” he said quietly.

She smiled at him, feeling radiant, feeling a thousand miles distant from the hurt woman of just an hour ago. “Thank you.”

She got up and threw her arms around him. He made a startled noise, but he didn’t pull away. After a minute, he very carefully hugged her back, patting her shoulder awkwardly.

She managed a wet laugh. They’d work on that.

She hugged Rufus again, and only let go when he muttered something about the Sarlacc in a strangled voice. She hugged Jiya, holding her tightly. Then she turned to Denise.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “I can’t imagine what it was like, trusting those letters…”

“You saved my _family_ , Lucy,” Denise told her. “I was certainly willing to help save yours.”

Seriously, Lucy should buy stock in Kleenex at this rate.

Wyatt came out of her room. She hugged him, too. He’d been as in the dark as she and Flynn. Nevertheless.

He held her tightly. “I’m so happy for you, Lucy,” he whispered.

She laughed. “I’m happy for  _you_ .”

They pulled back and looked at each other. “Man, look at the two of us, huh?” he added, his voice a little thick.

“You know,” she said, “I bet we could help you come up with middle names for Sherwin. I bet we could come up with some really _great_ ideas.”

“Oh, God, no.”

“Good night, Wyatt,” she told him.

He smiled. “Good night, Lucy.”

And then Lucy was standing in her bedroom, staring at Amy. At her miracle.

Somehow, she managed to get ready for bed without absentmindedly putting toothpaste in her hair or soap in her mouth. She hurried back to the bedroom, afraid that Amy might have vanished, that the whole thing might’ve been a tormenting dream, only to find that Amy had pushed the beds together.

“For two weeks you didn’t know who I _was_ ,” Amy told her. “It was awful.”

Lucy held her, burying her face in Amy’s hair, in that familiar shampoo.

They curled up back-to-back in the middle of the bed, just as they’d used to do decades before when they were watching out for monsters in the middle of the night. The monsters were very real, now. They didn’t come out in the middle of the night. They walked in broad daylight, wearing suits and saying reasonable things in calm, pleasant voices.

But screw them all, because Lucy could take on the whole  _world_ now.

The Preston sisters, united again? Rittenhouse just better watch out.

#

“So.” Jiya closed the door to their room behind her. Their storage container. Whatever. “How’s it feel to be Father Christmas?”

He looked up at her. “It feels really good,” he said quietly.

To see Wyatt, and Lucy, and even Flynn, so  _happy_ — to know he’d saved four innocent people from death and erasure—

So much of what they did seemed like after-the-fact damage control. Trying to make things a little less bad. This? This felt like  _winning_ .

She reached down and kissed him, slow, gentle, a little worried and sad. He knew the sadness was not for today, and that if she wasn’t trying to bottle up her grief from 1888, then she was having a good day.

He cupped the back of her neck. “So does that make you Mrs. Claus in this analogy?”

She snorted. “You sure you want to keep going with that?”

“Uh… no.”

She sat down beside him. He put his arm around her waist. She rested her head against his shoulder, and he rested his head against hers.

“You’re amazing, Rufus,” she muttered. “You scare the hell out of me sometimes, but you’re amazing.”

“I love you,” he whispered.

She looked up at him, and smiled. For once, her smile was untroubled. “I love you too.”

This time, their kiss was much happier.

“What’re you doing?” she asked, when they finally pulled away.

“Arguing with some douchebag on the Internet about slave Leia.”

Jiya looked at him.

“Hey. Everyone has their hobbies, okay?”

“Ugh,” Jiya said. “The things Star Wars did to its female characters always pissed me off. One reason I liked Star Trek better. I mean, slave Leia? Lucas _fridging_ Padmé?”

He winced. “I have to give you that.”

“I saw Phantom Menace three times—”

“You _what?_ ”

“— because I was seven, and Padmé was totally badass—”

“Okay, I’ll give you that one too.” Though that was _really, really_ painful to say.

“— and then all of a sudden they’re in a galaxy with bacta and clones and she still _dies_ in _childbirth?_ Of a freaking _broken heart?_ ”

“All to catalyze Anakin’s turn to the dark side.”

“Exactly. What kind of a writer does that to one of his most amazing female characters?”

Jiya, he decided, might really enjoy the Thrawn books. Specifically, she might really enjoy Mara. He’d have to see if he could guilt-trip Agent Christopher into bringing them a copy.

Rufus closed the laptop and put it on the floor, because Jiya was beside him and douchebags on the Internet could wait. “So,” he said after a minute. “You told me you were an angel?”

“Should I have said I was Darth Vader from the planet Vulcan?”

He snorted.

“Besides, angel was _your_ guess. I just went along with it.” She glanced at him. “You were adorable, by the way. Sleeping with a comic book under your pillow and an action figure instead of a teddy bear.”

“I wonder what I thought when you started working at Mason Industries.”

“I wore a Spock mask.”

Rufus choked. “You wore a  _Spock_ mask and I thought you were an  _angel?_ ”

She shrugged, smirking.

“Oh my God. Jiya, did you make me grow up as a _Star Trek_ fan in that timeline?”

“We’d have to ask Connor.”

“That’s just _too much_ meddling with the timeline, okay. There’s a line, and that crosses it. That _definitely_ crosses it.”

She kissed the corner of his mouth. “I’m glad we did this today,” she said softly. “I’m… really glad.”

“Me too.” He smothered an ill-timed yawn. Man, it had been a long day.

“Bed?”

“Mm-hmm.”

They climbed into the narrow bed together, which pretty much made snuggling up against each other unavoidable. Jiya made a contented noise as she drifted off to sleep. Rufus thought, for once, she might actually sleep  _well_ .

“I liked this way of saving the world,” she muttered. “Let’s do it again some…”

He kissed her hair, and closed his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is adapted from "The Doctor Dances" from new Doctor Who. The full quote is, "Everybody lives, Rose! Just this once, everybody lives!"
> 
> I'm still working on seeing the finale, so no spoilers in the comments, please.


End file.
